is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and educator. She grew up in Aiken, and the city and its environs serve as settings for much of her fiction. She is the author of three novels, two collections of short stories, and scores of short stories and essays published in literary journals and magazines. She holds a B.A. degree from UNC-Greensboro and an M.F.A. degree from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has been a newspaper reporter, founder and editor of a literary magazine, and professor of creative writing at Georgia State University. She now holds the first Doris Betts Distinguished Professorship in Creative Writing at UNC-Chapel Hill.
